Adoption

I was not the dream son my adoptive parents envisioned I’d be. I was a clumsy, overweight kid with Coke-bottle thick glasses and learning disabilities who couldn’t seem to do anything right— couldn’t even throw a ball. Father-son relationships can be challenging enough in biological families, but I learned early that they’re even more complex for an adopted son.

I was adopted in 1956. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that at that time unwed mothers faced ruin if they didn’t relinquish their infants—but my adoption was a lifelong event. It was a closed adoption, meaning that all genetic connections were severed when a new birth certificate was issued. This separation from my birthmother was the first trauma I experienced, and it influenced every aspect of my life. It diminished my self-esteem, disrupted my identity, and left me unable to form secure and satisfactory attachments.

My adoptive parents made a crucial mistake in waiting until I was eight to tell me I was adopted. I have no idea why they waited so long. I had already established a strong bond with my parents, and it confused and shattered me. When I said, “You’re not my real mother, then,” my mother’s face contorted. She looked possessed when she came at me and screamed in my face, “How dare you to question my motherhood, you selfish boy.” My father just stood there and let her rage. It took a moment, but the damage was permanent. I never trusted her after that. Not only had I lost my mother at birth, but now I had a mother who didn’t love or like me.

I’d bonded with my dad early on, but after the adoption talk, my relationship with him, too, changed. I had a younger brother, also adopted, and a younger sister—my parent’s biological child—but since I was the oldest son, there was more pressure on me. I was expected to be of blue-ribbon caliber. He forced me to play catch with him and he had no patience. “Pay attention and keep your eye on the ball,” he’d holler. No matter how hard I tried to concentrate, I always dropped the ball. When he and the kids on the block called me Charlie Brown, it stung.

My efforts to understand geometry were equally dismal. Late nights at the kitchen table with my dad doing homework, we were both stressed. He’d throw back another shot of Cutty Sark whiskey, yelling “pay attention” and cuffing my ears. I’d get debilitating stomach aches. I still hold those memories in my body, especially in my hunched shoulders. I felt broken and internalized the shame of not being enough for my dad.

An alcoholic with a violent temper, my dad was as unsafe as my mother was hot and cold emotionally. He would often say that how I turned out would reflect on him; I had to be perfect, and he was an unrelenting perfectionist. He needed me to be an extension of him, but  I couldn’t. I was the antithesis of him. Perhaps he felt I would become like him as if by osmosis.

It pained me that I couldn’t be more like my dad, but I couldn’t; I was another dad’s son. The more he pushed me, the more I shut down and retreated into my inner world of remote islands.

Growing up as an adoptee, I frequently fielded questions from friends and strangers alike. “Do you know who your real mother is?” “Do you think you look like your parents?” “What [ethnicity] are you?” The first two questions were easy to answer: My mother is my real mother.  No, I don’t look like either of them. But the third question hounded me my whole life. It speaks to a universal quest to identify with a group. And it speaks to the need of others to figure out who we are. For an adoptee, another question swirls around in the mix: Are we valid?

On one hand, our identity is who we believe we are, and on the other it’s who others believe us to be. In essence, the identity question is two-part: ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Who do you think I am?’ Adopted or not, we work to reconcile our personal vision of who we are versus who others believe we are. Yet when you’re adopted, there’s an added layer. For me, and I imagine for many adoptees, there’s a struggle to answer the question ‘Who are you?’ When others challenge our identity because of our adoption status, it’s difficult enough; but it’s further complicated by the fact that we have incomplete information about our genetic roots and, therefore, we can’t answer. And even when we get that information, we’re still left wondering how others view us.

I was adopted at birth and didn’t know my birth ethnicity until I was an adult. Of course, I had the ethnicity of my adoptive family, but even that was muddled. Muddled, in part, because my parents were somewhat non-traditional in the way they raised me—without strong traditions, based on ethnicity or religion. My parents were raised Jewish, but did not consider themselves religiously Jewish. My mother explained that while we were not religiously Jewish, we were “ethnically Jewish.” What does that mean exactly? I love brisket and knishes. I know what a seder is (a Baptist friend corrected me on a few details). I picked up some Yiddish words listening to conversations between my grandmother and her friends. But does that make me Jewish? From a religious standpoint, it does not. In fact, according to Jewish law, adoption alone doesn’t make you the religion of your adoptive mother. As an adult I learned that my birth mother is Protestant, and children born to non-Jews and adopted by Jewish parents must go through rituals of conversion before they are considered Jewish. I did not.

For years I kept his blue baby blanket in the bottom right-hand drawer of my dresser.

I stole it from the hospital.

I remember lifting it to my face and noting the sharp odor of sour milk mingled with the intoxicating scent of baby. Without a thought, I slipped the soft, waffle-like material into my brown paper sack.

When I got home, alone and hollowed out, I curled into a fetal position with the blanket bunched up like a pillow and cried.

I refused to wash it, hoping to hold on to what little remained.

In fragile moments, those times I couldn’t pretend anymore, I’d pull it out to hide my face and collect my tears. When the storm passed, I’d fold and tuck it away, careful to nestle his first pacifier and hospital identification bracelet, the one with the name I gave him on it, into the center, like eggs in a nest.

Two days after I learned I’d been adopted, we met to talk about the secret you’d kept from me. Looking back, I was completely unprepared for that conversation. I was still in shock from learning you weren’t my biological parents and that you lied by omission about this my entire life. What follows is what I wish I’d have known to express then in that first conversation. I didn’t know then that would be our only conversation about this. Had I been able to say these things then, I think it would have made it easier on all of us.

I don’t regret being adopted. I’ve had a great life; in reality I’ve been spoiled. You did a good job raising me to be the man I am today. You made me feel loved and supported. You taught me the importance of hard work and perseverance. You showed me the simple pleasure gained from working with my hands. You also guided me toward an honest life where I stand up for what I believe in without worrying much about the personal costs.  When I look at my life now, I don’t see how I would have ended up where I am today if you hadn’t adopted me. I’ve got a great wife, wonderful kids, and a life I love. 

But none of this changes my need to know who I am and where I come from. Searching for and reuniting with my biological family hasn’t been something I did as a rejection of you or as a result of some failure in your parenting. No matter how much you ignore my need to know, it will never disappear from inside of me. I simply have to understand who I am, and because of adoption, there’s more to that story than who raised me. 

As I trace my roots, I begin to understand why I am the way I am. I still see your hand in molding me, but I also see the biological foundation of my attitudes and behaviors. I also know where some of my struggles came from. You tried to shape me to be more outgoing; maintain outward appearances; and adopt a go-along-to-get along mindset at home, but biologically it wasn’t who I was, so we clashed over these expectations. 

Discovering my lineage and meeting my biological relatives makes me feel more like a whole person than I ever have. I’ve seen myself reflected back to me in others—my rebelliousness and personal style; my difficulty in going with the flow; my mischievous sense of humor; and my deep introversion. Since I’ve met my biological father and heard stories about my biological mother, these traits all make sense to me now. Before, it just felt like I was doing something wrong. 

While I’m not sorry I was adopted, I deeply regret that you kept my adoption secret from me for 48 years. Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, I can see the places where I was trying to force myself into a mold that was never meant for me. While for the most part I’ve made peace with the time and energy I invested trying to be someone I’m not, I likely will always have nagging questions about what might have been had I stayed truer to who I biologically was. It’s still hard to look back on the internal struggles I had—feeling like I’d failed in some way for not fitting into the family mold. It makes me sad to think about the fuller relationship I believe we could have had if I’d known the truth.

When you were but two years old, I came into being.

We were unaware of one another’s presence, but we co-existed.

Separated by a thousand miles, yet side by side on this planet, we grew.

We were born alone, no siblings with whom to form that unique bond.

We were given a name and assigned a family.

But somewhere out there, just beyond reach, the other was there.

I don’t know why we were allowed to live for more than 50 years without one another, and why we weren’t permitted the connection so many take for granted.

Were we somehow assigned the payment for sins of the fathers?

Why were we destined to miss out on the comfort, the familiarity, of another human connected by blood, intertwined for life?

We will never know. We will always wonder.

We will never get that time back.

But from this point forward, we now know.

There is another person, no longer unreachable and distant.

A person with whom we share blood, and genetics, and values.

Silly little things, like a preference for rice.

Difficulty swallowing.

And a dark, easy tan.

And big, important things, like stubbornness and independence.

Fierce loyalty.

Refusal to follow illogical rules.

And a smartass sense of humor.

We will never again be without.

No one can ever take this away.

We have less time left to be siblings than we had to be without.

So I choose to acknowledge, honor, and place immense value on this fact:

For the rest of my time on this planet, I will be

Finally, and forever,

Your sister.

That evening Ma ate clumsily from a bag of cheese curls and the orange dust caked on her fingers; crumbs hung from stray hairs on her chin.  Her left eyebrow tensed with each dramatic revelation the show brought. The episode was about the reunification of a mother and son after decades apart. They fell into each other’s arms and I became as tense as a pole. My heart sped up and a hard lump formed in my throat. I remembered the box in the upstairs closet labeled, The clothes Lisa came in, as though I purchased at a store with nothing before. A clean slate. “I never stopped thinking about you,” said the mother on tv. Tears escaped from my eyes. I wondered aloud over the years but had never asked the actual question.

“So Ma, what do you actually, really,  know about my birth mother?

She looked at me, one hazel eye lifted slightly. She breathed in carefully, turned to me, and switched off the tv.

“Well, her name was Margaret. Your name before we got you was Libby. But we thought you were more of a Lisa.”

My cheeks flushed.

“Libby? Like short for something, like Elizabeth? Lisa’s better anyway.”

“Nope, just Libby. Margaret was mentally ill; we know she lived for a while in the State Hospital. Also, we know that she may have been raped – or something.”

Raped- or something? A tremble tightened in the pit of my stomach.

“By who? Who raped her?”

“It may have been another patient. They didn’t tell us much.”

She sounded a bit too removed.

“Seriously? Really? That’s really nuts huh?”

Dear birth mother and father,

How are you? Where are you? Who are you?

I grew up with two Italian-American parents who have given me the world and more. I had as happy a childhood as anyone, the majority of my time spent running around outside in the grass and sunshine of a small, safe New England suburb. I have had many identities as an athlete, student, traveler and artist. I am in my third year of college in New York City.

From the outside my life looks fantastic, a true American dream. I’ve gotten everything I’ve ever wanted—moving to this big city to fulfill bigger dreams—and I should have absolutely nothing to complain about. I have been so fortunate, physically, financially, emotionally. I have the most caring and supporting family. I have no reason to be sad.

And yet you cannot help how you feel, can you? You cannot apologize for your emotions because you are not in control of them. Or you can have control of them, but only after some time. I’m not sure—I’m still trying to figure that out. But the uneasiness and anxiety over my past is something I still struggle to understand every day. I have no immediate reason to be anxious, but I am.

Few people would guess this, because outwardly I am fairly energetic and optimistic. It is inside my own head, especially when I am alone, that this fog comes over me and I feel an unending loneliness, even with the knowledge that, not too far away, there are people who care a lot about me.

I guess I used to cry about this a lot, when I was four—at least that’s what my mom told me this past winter break. I just learned, after twenty years, that I was not merely put into a foster home; I was abandoned in a park. Forest Park, a truly ironic twist of fate, given that my home in America is a five-minute drive from another Forest Park.

There were so many things already happening
The night a gibbous moon
Peered down at a young woman
Poised on the brink of a pregnant pause
There were already fishermen in the tiny village
Getting ready for the next day’s catch
There were already pious congregants in the small church
Getting ready for that evening’s prayer
There was already a Cancer sun and Aries rising
Getting ready to fate the earth
Already a destined heartbeat rising
Already a pre-ordained ocean tide rising
And down by the beach
There was already a boat waiting
To ferry away whatever foundling
Came earth side that night
Because there were already
The sideways glances and whispers
Already known crucial players missing in this act
How is it that before the infant
Even had the ability to wail and protest
There was already the both/and
Of inexpressible joy and sacred heartache
A duo of life long friends waiting for her
And even before there was a mother’s
Clenched jaw and concentrated travailing
There was already a cord being cut
And when the time came to take her first divine breath
And arms and land were there to catch her
With the finality that only life can give
It seemed already woven into her story
The counting of how many rebirths
Until she makes it back home

Light, water, love.

What a plant needs to thrive, to grow. Common needs for humans. But what if you didn’t get what you needed to grow? Would you somehow persevere?

I didn’t have what I needed to grow. I had the basics: food, shelter, clothing. They were fragile, not always in quantities that lead to secure knowledge of comfort. Clothing was mostly from garage sales or purchased with credit cards that would later have to be cut up. Shelter was a house that was mortgaged several times over to pay for a gambling addiction. Food was portioned, and bellies were filled with bread and butter to supplement basic nutrients.

Love was hard earned. It was conditional to behavior. Feelings of animosity and jealousy led to separation, physically and emotionally. My adult self recognizes the disfunction, the probable mental illness, the absurdity of the accusations. I did not feel loved.

I moved out three weeks after high school graduation, and I was given a tree a short time after that. A houseplant ficus tree. I cared for that tree. I gave it light, water, love. I made sure it had a sunny window in every rented apartment and basement space. As it grew, so did I.

Finally, living in a house to call home after I married, the tree thrived, and so did I. It grew so big and tall that it had to be replanted, cut back, split, and repotted many times over 30-plus years. It became a member of the family, fondly known as “the tree.” It stood in as a Christmas tree more than once. The tree lived at a trusted friend’s house when it got too tall.

I was scheduled for surgery on March 25, 2020, but because of the quarantine, the surgery was canceled. My condition declined and I politely and persistently encouraged my surgeon to appeal to the board. The appeal was successful and the surgery was and I had the surgery on April 17.

It was a much different experience then I could ever imagine.

I wasn’t afraid of the surgery. I’ve had several operations in my lifetime. But what I wasn’t prepared for was being alone—completely alone—immediately after my surgery and the entire night I spent in the hospital. The nurses and patient aides were attentive. If I needed something, I pushed the button, and they were able to help with pain meds or small amounts of food. But I was alone. Because of COVID-19, my husband was not allowed to be with me. He dropped me off at the door at 6 AM and I didn’t see him again until the next day when he came to drive me home.
I spent the entire night alone and in pain and had no one to comfort me. I imagine that my birth mother may have felt the same way the night she gave birth to me. I tried to get comfortable, but couldn’t. I tried to sit or lie in different positions, but it didn’t help. I was in pain and I cried. I barely slept. I felt nauseous at times and struggled to drink even the smallest amounts of water. My heart ached for my loved ones. When the nurse did come in, she was quick and efficient but didn’t stick around for small talk. She didn’t provide any kind of nurturing or offer encouraging words. I cried more and thought about calling someone, anyone, but I didn’t want to be a bother. Adoptees do that—we feel bad asking for help, as if we should be able to handle everything or because maybe we are not deserving of basic human compassion.

I circle my birthday on the calendar every year.

As the date draws closer, its approach feels increasingly like warm, heavy breathing on the nape of my neck and I begin to think about it daily, as much as I don’t want to. The breathing on my neck intensifies. I work hard to bottle up anticipation that bubbles up from my soul. When it is a week away, anxiety skyrockets. Try as I might to banish all birthday thoughts and emotions from my mind and body, I’m unable to. The more I try not to think about it, the more I do. Thank you, irony.

Then it arrives. It’s here! The big day! Time to celebrate! Celebratory texts and Facebook posts begin rolling in. Regardless of what’s planned for me on this most wondrous of days, I don’t need to guess what this day will be like or how I will feel. It’s my birthday after all. October 10th is here. Yippy.
Anxiety levels now reach all-time highs, or, to be precise, match the same highs set each preceding year. I don’t know what to do with myself. There is one certainty with my birthday: I will find a way to sabotage it. As sure as the sun rises each morning, my birthday will somehow become a fiasco.

For most of my life it has been like this. I wish it would stop, but it won’t. Like a family of pit vipers slithering over each other in a dark den, something buried in my subconscious moves, waiting for a chance to strike. I’m riddled with emotional pain and loneliness even though I’m blessed to be married to a superhero and am a father to two wonderful children who go out of their way to do nice things for me. I feel as if I am seeking something that cannot be found.

Many adoptees dread an elementary school project that seems to be universally assigned — the family tree project. The teachers ask children to research their roots and family origins to find out where they came from and what their heritage is. Most children like me, adopted during the baby scoop era, lived in families in which we were simply expected to assume our place in the adoptive family and take our identity from it. I first encountered the family tree project when I was in 2nd grade. It created consequences from which I not only never recovered, but which also shaped my future in unforeseeable ways.
I have a strong memory from that school year. I asked my mom, “What am I?” I meant what nationality was I, where did MY people come from? Kids at school were talking about this and I could not join the conversation. Stephanie was German, Korey was Korean, what was I? She had no answer for me other than the vague and slightly suspect information given to her by the social worker who arranged my adoption. It wasn’t good enough for me.

my body remembers

the shiver of separation

the moment of release

from anything and everything I ever knew

my body remembers

the renunciation

the retraction

the ricochet

of loss

pain becomes an echo of that loss

that thunders through my skull

screaming

forcing me to remember what my body refuses to forget